


One Foot in Front of the Other

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captivity, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 02:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16610201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: Being held captive is never easy, and it gets even worse when you're an enhanced hero whose powers are taken away.





	One Foot in Front of the Other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hecate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/gifts).



> This fic pretty much completely ignores Civil War.

###  _~*~ Trauma ~*~_

It wasn’t in the heart of winter’s cold when they were taken. The night was not dark and stormy, a blood moon hadn’t been hanging high in the sky, and some terrible omen had not split the night just prior to their capture. Instead, they were kidnapped by the bad guys on a warm day at the end of April. The sun had even been shining when an unexpected blast erupted in the portion of the industrial complex that Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch had been working together to clear. Rocked by the explosion, both of them fell into darkness.

When Tony awoke, his suit was gone. His joints ached He’d been left with absolute no tech to speak of—apparently someone had studied the reports of the incarceration that had led to the creation of the first Iron Man suit. His whole body throbbed with the same dull ache that he got from the most intense hangovers, and the threadbare mattress he found himself lying on didn’t help the matter. He groaned as he rolled to a sitting position and took stock of his surroundings.

The first thing he saw was Wanda, and the way she looked made him immediately sprint toward her.

He collided with a clear glass wall in the middle of the room. The force of the collision dropped him to his knees, and he thumped a fist against the glass in frustration. They’d strapped her into some sort of straightjacket, her arms pinned in a crossed position and secured behind her back. A collar with a blinking light on an attached black box was fixed at her neck. Judging from the resignation in her posture, it was some sort of dampener for her powers. Her eyes were closed, the back of her head resting against the wall. Tony looked up along the transparent sheet in front of him, searching for any indication that he’d be able to get through. The only gaps in the wall were a row of one inch circular holes just below the ceiling—enough for sound to travel through, but too high for either of them to reach. A quick survey of the room didn’t reveal anything helpful. The bed he’d awakened on, just like the bed Wanda sat atop, was little more than a board bolted to the wall. Aside from the wall of glass that separated them the other walls were solid concrete broken only by a heavy steel door for each of them.

“Wanda,” he called, reaching up to smack the glass again. “Wanda!”

Her eyes opened slowly. They were dull and listless, though even at a distance he could see they were clear enough to indicate that she hadn’t been drugged. She didn’t speak, but her gaze was focused directly on him.

“Hey there, witchy woman.”  He swallowed hard, forcing his voice to reflect that same bravado he was known for in the press coverage. “Not gonna ask how you’re doing since I’m pretty sure I’ve got an idea.” He offered her a small shred of a smile. She didn’t return it, and he sighed when realization struck. Of course she wouldn’t go for the front. She was so used to seeing into people’s minds that she could probably recognize when he was putting on a show. Honesty was going to be the way to go. “I gotta level with you, I don’t think there’s anything we can do here. We’re going to have to wait for a rescue.”

Though she still didn’t speak, Wanda nodded in agreement. With her powerless and him without any tech they didn’t have much to work with. He’d made the right choice.

“Look,” he continued, turning just enough to rest his back against the glass and tilting his head back direct his voice toward the holes along the ceiling. “I know I’m not your favorite on the team. Pretty sure I’m your least favorite, but I’m in here with you. This isn’t my first rodeo for the whole ‘kidnapped and held hostage’ routine. The important thing is to focus on when you get out. Not if, because there is no if. Only when. I may not be your favorite, but I am here with you. And I’m not leaving without you. We’ll get through this together.” Slowly, the glass at his back began to warm. “Did I ever tell you about what it was liked being kidnapped that time I was held in a cave in a desert? I feel like this might be a good time for that story.”

When the cavalry arrived they didn’t waste time figuring out the why. They just started smashing their way through the villains. They’d gone through a lot of trouble to locate their missing teammates—the kind of trouble that had Thor asking a friend who could apparently see all for their location directly. When the Avengers made their way through the facility to the holding cells that had been built for just this purpose in the basement, they found Tony and Wanda sitting back to back, a glass wall between them.

 

###  _~*~ Commiseration ~*~_

Wanda’s nightmares rattled the entire facility at the New Avengers compound. All of the Avengers had their fair share of nightmares, but with Wanda things were different. Bad dreams were the one constant that never failed to make her lose control of her powers. Whenever one began a rolling red fog would creep through the crack at the bottom of her bedroom door and spread across the compound. Arcs of white lightning shot through the fog more and more frequently as the dreams would get worse. Doors opened and closed, items danced off of shelves, and furniture shifted into new and interesting positions. Though they came at all kinds of times, the dreams were always at their most frequent and intense after field work. Even when everything went right, a call to assemble would inevitably remind her of how that one particular call had gone so very wrong.

Tony always managed to be awake when the nightmares started. The signs would begin to slip into the lab around whatever distraction he was working on, catching his attention almost immediately. After the first five times, he made it a habit to immediately set aside whatever he was working on. She never screamed, never cried out in the night. When she came awake from the visions it always happened suddenly and silently, and it never happened before Tony had crossed the threshold of her bedroom door. Her eyes would fly open on his first step into the room. By the time he reached the foot of her bed she'd be sitting upright with her arms wrapped around her knees.

They never spoke when he woke her. Even though what animosity Wanda had held for him Evaporated in the wake of their experience together they still struggled with what might be considered normal communication. She never turned him away, though. Tony would settle down on one side of the bed and tug her against his side. Most of the time they didn’t get back to sleep. On those nights they’d lie side by side until the rising sun broke through the windows. Other nights they would both fall into an easy doze that neither of them was willing to admit felt better than any sleep they got on their own.

None of the other Avengers knew what woke Wanda and made the fog recede, and neither of them felt inclined to share.

 

###  _~*~ Solace ~*~_

The Stark mansion had lain empty and forgotten since Howard and Maria’s deaths in 1991. A gardener and his staff were on retainer to maintain the grounds. A housekeeper was paid to visit regularly, sweep away the dust and cobwebs accumulated through vacancy, and air out the rooms. Thrice a year a decorator was hired to build a festive facade for Independence Day, Halloween, and Christmas. It was a popular photo spot for locals and tourists, but was otherwise left to its own devices.

When Wanda’s nightmares had still barely improved by the first winter snow Tony ordered the mansion to be opened again. It had been impeccably maintained and was ready in a matter of days. Then, he packed Wanda and himself into one of his cars and drove the winding New York roads to his childhood home. For three days they subsisted on takeout and vodka, barely speaking but reveling in the comfort and quiet of a house without expectations. Despite the multitude of luxurious bedrooms, they usually slept on couches in one of the parlors, and if they tended to end up on the same couch, well, there was no one around to hide it from.

On the fourth day, missing his lab, Tony made the terrible decision to try to cook. He didn’t get too adventurous, opting instead for a simple meal of tomato bisque and grilled cheese sandwiches. At least, that hadn’t sounded too adventurous when he’d looked up the recipes on Pinterest. Apparently, grilling cheese was more difficult than it sounded, and there seemed to be something in the recipe for tomato bisque that defied the laws of chemistry. By the time Wanda shuffled into the kitchen the smoke alarm had gone off three times, his sandwiches resembled charcoal briquettes, and he’d somehow managed to make a tomato based dish a rather sickening shade of green.

“What exactly are you trying to do in here?” Wanda asked. Tony fought hard not to whip his head around in her direction at the hint of a smile in her voice. He wasn’t sure he’d seen her smile since before they were taken.

“Don’t you know a culinary genius at work when you see one?” he quipped instead, flipping his next sandwich attempt and grimacing at the nearly blackened bread he turned up. Before he could make any adjustments the pan and spatula in his hands glowed red and lifted out of his grasp.

“Oh no,” she insisted, nudging him out of the way with a hip. “For your own safety and mine I am taking over.” She set the pan back on the stove with a wave of one hand, frowning at the mountain of ingredients he’d scattered over the counter. “What exactly were you trying to make?”

He tried not to be miffed as he explained his plan and pulled up the recipes on a StarkPad. Wanda nodded along to the explanation, then set to work. She made adjustments to the recipe as she went, adding spices and other ingredients she pulled from the fridge and cabinets seemingly at random. Tony wasn’t sure she realized just how much she used her powers for mundane things, but he was too enthralled by the show to point it out. She levitated ingredients as she needed them, dropped her hands from handles only to catch those handles with her powers, and still managed to hum as she worked. It wasn’t long before she had a bisque simmering on the stove and everything prepped to throw the sandwiches in a pan as soon as the soup was ready.

“All the things I can build and I fail at lunch,” Tony muttered, shifting to lean against the counter beside her as Wanda cleaned her hands on a kitchen towel. “How do people even learn this stuff?”

“The same way you learned everything else,” Wanda snorted. “Study and practice. When you cook for yourself instead of letting others do it you improve.” The tiny smile that had graced her lips as she worked began to disappear, her momentarily open expression shuttering closed before his eyes.

“Don’t do that,” Tony muttered quietly, reaching out to loosely grasp her wrist before he thought to stop himself. “If you keep boxing it all up like that you’ll never get past it.”

When she responded, her tone was almost mutinous. “Is that what you think you are? Past it all?”

“Not in the least,” he admitted without hesitation. “But I’m moving that direction instead of staying in the same place.”

The closed expression cracked and then, finally, broke entirely. A tear rolled down her cheek and dripped onto the counter. “And how exactly do you start moving past it?”

“Oh, you know.” Tony gently tugged on her wrist until she stood directly in front of him. He smoothed her hair away from her face with both hands, catching the slowly increasing stream of her tears with his thumbs. “One foot in front of the other. A step at a time. However you have to do to make it happen.”

Her eyes were tear-bright when she looked up at him, lips parted as she took in hiccupping breaths. “I can’t do this alone.”

Tony laughed. He leaned forward until their foreheads touched, the tips of their noses brushing and their breath mingling. “You aren’t alone, Wanda.” He dragged his thumbs over her cheeks before letting his hands drift down over her shoulders and arms to light on her waist. “I’m right here.” To his surprise, she closed the distance between them, tilting her head back just far enough to bring her lips against his. He ended up pressed between her and the counter, her hands fisted in his t-shirt.

In the end, she scorched the bisque and he distracted her enough that the sandwiches were darker than they should have been, but they both ate with smiles on their faces.


End file.
